Visual Studio 2010 (Beta 2)

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Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 is available to all MSDN subscribers. Public release will follow on October 21st.

First thing that I noticed is bunch of editions (Ultimate, Premium, Professional and Express). This is probably how things will look once final version is out. While I am not sure what differences are among them, I am sure that Ultimate will be wet dream of all programmers. And do notice that you are allowed to go live with this beta.

Installation was quite slow, it required one restart and it did gave some bogus warnings (like trying to run PowerShell 1.0 on Windows 7), but I cannot blame it too much. This was on system where beta 1 was previously installed and I cannot say that some issues weren’t actually from uninstalling it. However, one hit on Retry button solved every problem I had. I must confess that this is quite sturdy installation.

I will stop with praises here since I am yet to test it in real-life. However, it does look nice.

P.S. Still no support for Windows Mobile. I guess they are saving that for final release…

HP ML150 G5

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After quite a long time, I got my hands on one server - HP ML150 G5 to be more precise.

First thing that I must notice is that this guy is heavy. It has slightly less than 30 kilograms and while this doesn’t seem like much, it’s shape ensures that getting good grip is thing of luck more than skill. Although I would like some grabbing handles somewhere on side, once you put it down you can be sure that it will stay there. Of course, basic rack conversion kit is included.

This is entry server and I got entry configuration:

  • Intel Xeon E5430 (2.66 GHz)
  • 2 GB RAM
  • 2x SAS 72 GB

As you can see, this is almost as low as you can get for something that ought to be Hyper-V server, but there is huge potential for upgrade. You can add one more processor, add more memory (total of six slots) and throw in few more hard drives (four SAS and six SATA).

Installation of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 went without a hitch. All devices were recognized without problems and I haven’t bothered to update any drivers. Once SQL Server 2008 ended up on machine, everything went to hell. Each time any real disk activity occurred, machine would just freeze. Root cause was traced to BIOS that was from January of 2008! Once I upgraded to latest version (both BIOS and iLO), it started working properly. This was first time for me that BIOS bug caused that much of problems.

Intention of this server is to take role of aging SQL Server 2000 installation (1.7 GHz P4, 1 GB RAM). Total load of this is not enough to saturate even basic configuration. However, if everything goes alright, upgrades are planned and more load will be added. Than we shall see true nature of that beast. And I have a good feeling about it.

My Documents on SD Card

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Although I have 256 MB of ROM on my mobile device sometime that is not quite enough. I have habit of recording audio notes quite a lot. This is problematic since you cannot save those files directly on Secure Digital card. All recording goes in My Documents and it has to be transferred manually. It is quite easy to bring yourself into situation where your 8 GB SD card is empty and your ROM is full.

Unlike desktop, there is no procedure in which you can change location of “My Documents” folder. So I did next best thing - renaming of “Storage Card”. Because of Microsoft’s localization efforts, this folder has name that can be changed.

With registry editor go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\StorageManager\Profiles\SDMemory”. In that key there is value named “Folder” (if it is not there, create it). Change value of it to “My Documents”.

Second (and final) step is to use file manager to rename “My Documents” into something else (e.g. “My Old Documents”). After you do this, reboot. Once booting is completed, you should have whole content of your SD card inside of “My Documents” folder.

If you forget to rename original “My Documents”, Windows Mobile will, after reboot, detect conflict and card will end up being “My Documents 2”.

Downside to this is that you restrict your ability to use your mobile without card in. As soon as there is no card, Windows mobile will recreate “My Documents” and thus you will need to repeat whole procedure.

This will also happen if you use “Disk Drive” transfer mode (Settings -> Connetions -> USB to PC). If this setting is enabled, every time you insert your device into USB, SD card is disconnected.

Additionally, when you use ActiveSync (or Windows Mobile Device Center), “My Documents” will not be synchronized any more. I seems that synchronization procedure handles SD card differently that other folders.

However, having few GB available makes up for all of this.

FreeNAS on Hyper-V

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For small server installation, I decided to use FreeNAS. Intention was to put it in Hyper-V alongside other (mostly Windows) machines and have FreeNAS handle all file sharing between them. Since it was just internal element and there was no DHCP in internal network, fixed IP was to be used.

Only problem with whole setup is that it doesn’t work. Whenever I tried to access FreeNAS machine, it seemed not alive. When I reset LAN IP address in it’s console menu (option 2) it was live again only to be silent on next reboot. That meant that every time NAS is restarted, manual intervention would be needed to make it accessible. Not exactly a comfortable setup.

Fortunately, solution is quite simple. First setup FreeNAS’ IP from console window. Once that part is completed, you will have access to web GUI where second part will take place.

In “System” -> “Advanced” menu go to “Command scripts” and there add two commands:

ifconfig de0 down
ifconfig de0 up

Type for both commands should be set to “postinit”. This will ensure that network adapter is reset on every reboot.

Once done with this, save and shut whole system down. Power it back for testing. If you did it correctly, you should have FreeNAS available.